U.S. Protests N. Korea’s Treatment of Journalists

WASHINGTON — President Obama and his top national security aides on Monday urged North Korea to release “on humanitarian grounds” two American journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for entering North Korean territory. But administration officials said that the harsh sentences were likely to be used as a negotiating ploy by the North as it tries to avoid new sanctions in response to its nuclear test two weeks ago.

In public statements, administration officials frequently referred to the two journalists as “young women” who might have inadvertently crossed the North Korean border, and urged North Korea to return them to their families. “Their detainment is not something that we’ve linked to other issues, and we hope the North Koreans don’t do that, either,” Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, told reporters on Monday afternoon.

Clearly, the sentencing on Monday of Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, to serve in North Korea’s famously brutal labor camps — where stories of starvation, overwork and mistreatment are legion — greatly complicated the Obama administration’s agenda. The administration has been working at the United Nations Security Council for a series of new sanctions that would both cut off funds to North Korea and interdict cargo, to search for missiles, weapons or nuclear technology.

Administration officials appeared to be weighing whether to send a special envoy in a high-profile effort to seek the release of the two women, who were detained by North Korean soldiers at the Chinese border on March 17. The two most likely candidates are former Vice President Al Gore, whose Current TV channel employs the two journalists, and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who has visited North Korea a number of times and arranged the release of another American 15 years ago.

But the White House declined to talk about that option, and Mr. Gore has largely kept quiet, perhaps in hopes of not hardening the North’s position. Mr. Richardson said it was too early for Mr. Obama to send a personal representative.

“Talk of an envoy is premature, because what first has to happen is a framework for negotiations on a potential humanitarian release,” Mr. Richardson told NBC News. “What we would try to seek would be some kind of a political pardon.”

American officials said they feared that any discussions with the North about the release of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee could get caught up in the Byzantine politics of succession in the North Korean capital. In recent weeks, there have been numerous reports that the leader, Kim Jong-il, has settled on his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor, a step that the North Korean military and China, North Korea’s reluctant patron, are believed to oppose.

In the first public confirmation of the younger Kim’s apparent selection, Kim Jong-il’s oldest son told a Japanese television station Saturday that all questions about the country’s recent nuclear test would have to be referred to “my father or my brother now, not me.” Speaking in English, he repeated essentially the same answer when asked about his father’s potential successor, though he suggested he had first heard the news from the Asian news media.

The older son, Kim Jong-nam, is widely believed by analysts and American intelligence agencies to have been passed over because of his appetite for gambling and women.

It probably did not help his reputation in that regard when Japanese cameras caught up with him in Macao, the former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong known for casinos and money laundering. Kim Jong-nam ended the interview by declaring, “I’m not involved in political affairs in North Korea.”

Photo

People watched news reports Monday in Seoul, South Korea, about North Koreas sentencing of two American journalists, Euna Lee, left, and Laura Ling.Credit
Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press

In California, the home state of both Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee, the news of their sentencing was met with a mixture of dread and hope that the end of the legal process could actually mark the beginning of a settlement.

“The 12 years just hits home, and make it more real,” said Marcus Marquez, who attended high school with Ms. Ling in Fair Oaks, a suburb of Sacramento, and has known her for more than 20 years.

Raised in a modest middle-class home in the shadow of her more famous journalist sister, Lisa Ling, Ms. Ling was studious and friendly, according to Mr. Marquez. He said that she had seemingly grown more confident and ambitious in her reporting in recent years, including a story just before her arrest about the drug war in Mexico.

Lisa Ling told ABC that the two journalists were working on a story about the trafficking of North Korean women into China when they were detained, but other reports said they were reporting on North Korean refugees. The exact circumstances of their arrest remain unclear.

The families of the two journalists said in a statement Monday that they were “shocked and devastated by the outcome of their trial.”

If the women wandered into North Korean territory, the families said, they apologized on their behalf “and we are certain that they have also apologized.”

The human rights group Amnesty International criticized the procedures behind the sentencing and called for the journalists’ immediate release. “No access to lawyers, no due process, no transparency: the North Korean judicial and penal systems are more instruments of suppression than of justice,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy director.

The sentencing comes at a time of heightened tensions between the North and the United States. On April 5, the North launched a rocket in what was widely believed to be a test of its long-range Taepodong-2 missile, and in late May it conducted its second nuclear test in less than three years.

The United Nations Security Council is weighing tougher sanctions against the country and the possible interdiction of North Korean ships suspected of carrying unconventional weapons.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview Sunday that the United States was examining a request by lawmakers to restore the North to the list of nations branded as sponsors of terrorism.

But the State Department did everything it could on Monday to argue that this was unlikely. There is little evidence that North Korea has sponsored acts of terrorism in recent years, which led the Bush administration to de-list the country.

Correction: June 12, 2009

An article on Tuesday about the difficulties faced by the Obama administration in seeking the release of two American journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea, which is undergoing a succession struggle, misspelled the given name of the eldest son of Kim Jong-il, the North’s leader. The son, who analysts believe has been passed over to succeed his father, is Kim Jong-nam, not Kim Young-nam.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea. Jesse McKinley contributed reporting from San Francisco.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Urges North Korea to Release American Journalists. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe